Facebook last week updated its commenting widget to allow for more personalized chats on third-party sites, and while some sites have seen a decrease in the number of nasty comments thanks to the Facebook tie-in, others are concerned that connecting comments on third-party sites to Facebook might discourage frank discussions.

The update to Facebook's Comments Box plugin was intended to make comments more relevant. Users to a particular site see comments from Facebook friends first and Facebook added public information about users next to their names. To push more traffic to third-party sites, Facebook also added links to those partner sites on Facebook.com news feeds and Pages.

All this is helpful if you're interested in tying your non-Facebook activity to the social-networking site. But what if you comment regularly on a site that adopts Facebook comments, and you don't want those comments to be visible to your 450 Facebook friends? By default, the "Post to Facebook" box underneath the comments widget on third-party sites is checked. You can uncheck it to have your thoughts remain on that page only, but people on that site will still see your Facebook profile pic, and clicking on your name takes people to your Facebook profile.

TechCrunch, a site known for its vocal commenters, recently adopted Facebook comments as an experiment. After a week, the tech site noticed that "the overall number of comments have fallen dramatically." But TechCrunch said the drop was "completely expected and definitely not a bad thing."

"Previously, many of our posts would get hundreds of comments (and sometimes more), but at least half of those would be of a quality best described as weak to poor. And of those, about half would be pure trollish nonsense," MG Siegler wrote. "Simply put: with the previous system, roughly half of the comments were more or less useless."

Basically, few people were willing to tie their useless or trollish comments to their Facebook accounts. It's one thing to create an anonymous username and comment away, but if there's a chance that your roommate, mom, and ex-boyfriend might see your odd online rants, the willingness to be obnoxious wanes. Anyone who writes for a site with a public commenting system no doubt feels TechCrunch's pain.

Strangely, however, TechCrunch also found that "many people are now leaving comments that gush about the subject of the article in an overly sycophantic way. It's quite odd. The cold pricklies have turned to warm fuzzies."

Siegler noted that "neither is ideal. But nausea-inducing kindness is certainly better than rage-inducing assholeishness."

At this point, TechCrunch said it is sticking with Facebook's commenting system.

But while sites with out-of-control commenting systems might welcome the Facebook widget, some are concerned that the switch will result in the death of online anonymity. Part of the appeal of the Web is that you can privately research and discuss just about any topic. If this system moves to Web sites that cover sensitive topics, will people be less likely to use the Web to seek help or voice their true feelings? Yes, a user could uncheck that "Post to Facebook" box, but someone will inevitably forget. You can also create a fake Facebook account for commenting purposes, but how annoying is that?

Those are some of the issues bothering tech entrepreneur Steve Cheney. In a Sunday blog post, Cheney argued that the Facebook comment system is killing your authenticity.

"The problem with tying Internet-wide identity to a broadcast network like Facebook is that people don't want one normalized identity, either in real life, or virtually," he wrote. "People yearn to be individuals. They want to be authentic. They have numerous different groups of real-life friends. They stylize conversations. They are emotional and have an innate need to connect on different levels with different people."

"Forcing people to comment  and more broadly speaking to log-on  with one identity puts a massive stranglehold on our very nature," Cheney argued.

Comments on TechCrunch seem to bear this out. "Since whatever I comment is now indexed and permanently searchable by my name, why the hell would I comment on anything?" one reader wrote.

"I use my Facebook as a personal profile for my close friends. I have no interest in making public my Facebook account - and I certainly don't appreciate the many 'friend requests' that I've garnered from my few post-Disqus comments on TC," wrote another.

Tech journalist Larry Magid, meanwhile voiced concern that "site owners are turning over the storage and 'ownership' of comments and their relationship with the commenters to Facebook instead of being able to manage it themselves."

Magid also didn't like that people needed Facebook accounts to comment. On the TechCrunch post, someone signed in via Yahoo to comment, but it only gave me the option to do so via Facebook. Facebook said that it will soon add new log-in providers so those who are not Facebook members can still comment, but it has not yet released any additional details.

About the Author

Before joining PCMag.com, Chloe covered financial IT for Incisive Media in NYC and technology policy for The National Journal's Technology Daily in Washington, DC. She has held internships at NBC's Meet the Press, washingtonpost.com, the Tate Gallery press office in London, Roll Call, and Congressional Quarterly. She graduated with a bachelor's deg... See Full Bio

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